COVID-19 and the Wuhan Diary –how does the overseas Chinese community react to group criticism?

We conduct an online survey to explore how Chinese people living in Germany perceive and react to group criticism in the context of the debate on the Wuhan Diary, a chronicle about life during the lockdown in Wuhan. We find that the majority rating of the book is a lukewarm “neither like nor dislike.” Most participants are open to criticism in principle and do not agree that the book only spreads so-called “negative-energy”. However, many participants were skeptical about the objectivity of the book and concerned about its potential use by so-called anti-China forces, even though the degree of blind patriotism is relatively low in our sample. The factors influencing the book’s evaluation are intriguing: perceived Western sentiment, media exposure and uncritical patriotism all affect COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs, which in turn lead to a more negative evaluation of the book. A cluster analysis reveals two groups which differ in terms of properties like blind patriotism, belief in certain conspiracies, and also demographic parameters. Our results shed light on identity politics, motivated beliefs, and collective narcissism.

No Common Ground: A Spatial-Relational Analysis of EU-China Relations

It is no secret that EU member states cannot come to terms on a unified China-policy. Most studies on EU-China relations come to the conclusion that disagreement exists and that this fragmentation is utilized by Chinese foreign policy in a kind of divide and rule strategy. However, the question as to why the EU members disagree has not been answered satisfactorily. This paper investigates the reasons for this discord from the perspective of the core-periphery theory. We illustrate how the spatial position of nations within Europe–in a geographical and political sense–shapes their outlook on China. As a case study to illustrate the differences in the outlook on China of among EU member countries, we analyse the discourses on Chinese COVID-19 vaccines in the Hungarian and German press from April 2020 until summer 2021. We argue that these differences have their grounds in the spatial-relational positioning at either the core or the semi-periphery of the EU. Based on our findings we suggest that a sustainable EU China-policy has first to address these differences in foreign policy outlook and then find a common ground.